


Vainglory Soup for the Soul

by Allegory



Category: Vainglory (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Lesbian, Lesbian Sex, M/M, Sex, Smut, Taka x adagio, Vainglory, Vanilla, Yuri, kestrel x celeste
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-11 17:35:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9000223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: Compilation of ship drabbles. Ships listed in chapter names.





	1. Chapter 1

"Ada."

"Hmm?"

Adagio turns around. Light filters in between the shutters, illuminating stripes of his skin. The duvet shifts, a soft, rustling sound.

"Yes, my love?" Adagio's foot settles next to Taka's tail. He presses his toes in the dim orange fur and leans into the crook of Taka's neck. He inhales.

Taka falls back into silence. There's nothing but the faint rise and fall of his chest, a heartbeat that might, or might not, be there.

"It's nothing."

He curls up like an unborn fetus. Adagio knows that Taka does this sometimes, when he is in his arms late at night and he gently pushes Adagio's hands away, rolling away to the edge of the bed. In the early hours once the foggy wisps of dawn rise, Taka resumes position close to him. Taka would watch him with a loving gaze but Adagio would only see the exhaustion, the war that had taken place in his head.

Adagio could counsel him, but nothing would come of it. Words may heal wounds but perhaps not scabs, not those as old and haphazard as his. He has lived long enough to understand this.

Still.

"Nightmare?"

"No."

"A memory, then?"

"No."

Adagio wonders what expression Taka is wearing, if seeing it would burn something ancient inside him. Taka's left ear perks, twitching. Adagio registers the noise a moment later, a _rat-tat-atat_ on hard surface. His eyes scan the window. He catches sight of a moth latched to the glass, wings fluttering with a likeness to crabs skittering across a beach. Disjointed.

"You."

Taka's whisper impregnates the air, filling it with an uncertainty that confuses Adagio. He swears he might've felt the blood pump through him. Ridiculous.

"What're you saying?"

"Nothing," Taka insists. His head is angled towards the moth, the twin black eyes on its wings. The symmetry pleases Adagio, though the colors aren't to his artisan taste. Taka wouldn't think that. _What would he think?_ Adagio mulls, figuring that he hasn't the slightest clue.

"It's hurt," Taka says. Adagio focuses his bleary eyes on the glass and sees that, indeed, a red ant has clasped its jaw on the moth's back leg. The moth continues to stutter, sliding up and down the window pane, attempting to kick the ant off.

"So it is."

Taka slips under the blanket, shrugging him off. The heat and suffocation pleases him. When they're pressed against each other, bare skin on skin, Taka reaches out for Adagio's hands and moves them gingerly to his throat, beckoning him to squeeze. They've been sleeping in one bed for months and Adagio knows nothing of him, his family, origins, as if the world had one day decided to conjure him out of thin air.

"I'm all right. Go make coffee, Ada."

This is Taka's polite way of saying  _get out._ Adagio obliges, crawling off the bed all too aware of his headiness- unseemly, for a seraph. When he returns to the room five minutes later, Taka has gotten off the bed. The sheets are neatly folded and he sits on the reading table, legs propped on the velvet-lined cushion atop a stool. He smells the coffee before Adagio enters and turns to face him, breaking out in a broad smile.

"Morning, babe."

Adagio hands him a ceramic mug. He notices that the moth is gone.


	2. Kestrel / Celeste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly what it says on the tin.

Grey dawn pours into the castle interior. Celeste gazes out through the windows, thick storm clouds roiling along the horizon. Something stirs in the periphery of her vision. She presses her palm to her neck, feeling cold perspiration on her skin. There’s no one behind her.

_“Princess.”_

Thunder roars in her ears. On her right is a woman of close-cropped blonde hair, hands held behind her back. The dullness of the morning washes color off her livery and flesh; everything save her eyes, which flash metallic steel at the strike of lightning.

“Kestrel,” Celeste acknowledges. She runs her fingers over her hair, smoothing stray locks. “If anyone catches you here…”

“They won’t.”

It’s a promise.

Three months have passed since Celeste had last seen the hard line of her lips, pulled taut as a bowstring. Her pasty skin, slightly tanned and craggy, worn by the vicious force of nature and an eternity of nights weathered out on the field. Her voice is a little rougher than Celeste remembers and there’s a cut on her cheek, maybe a week old.

Celeste glances around her. She pauses to listen to another clap of thunder. Then she tilts her head in the direction of her room, but Kestrel’s already gone.

 

A lone candle flickers in her quarters. Celeste had drawn the curtains back before leaving for her morning ride; now their thick velvet fabric obscures the outside world. She hears the crackle of a fireplace and turns to her left to see it burning. A small circle of coals, the iron poker left in their midst. Warm.

“Shall we?”

Celeste has grown accustomed to her vanishing act. She puts her hand out and feels Kestrel’s fingers slide in between hers, callouses pockmarking the ranger’s skin. Kestrel wraps an arm around Celeste’s back, pulling her short cape over them. Celeste won’t ever say it, but she loves when Kestrel does this.

So it plays over Celeste’s mind, as they trail over to the bed, how the two of them had first gotten tangled like this. A hunt, Kestrel wounded and caught in her net of stars. Celeste should’ve handed her over. She hadn’t.

“I don’t have long.” Kestrel murmurs this on the lid of her ear, fingers tugging on the intricate laces of Celeste’s collar. “Quarter of a bell. Then I must leave.”

Celeste has her palms on the curves of Kestrel’s waist. A wilted rose droops in the vase of her bedside table; a rather dashing visitor had come to her doorstep one day, promising the flower was a tribute from her love.

“As you always do,” Celeste remarks. She reaches for the lapels of Kestrel’s coat and smooths them out. The brooch of the Stormguards shimmer, frigid under her touch.

“Believe me,” Kestrel kisses her nape, brief and chaste. “I wish we had more time. But we will. When this is over.”

Celeste’s knuckles whiten. She curls her fists, held just above Kestrel’s chest. She mutters, in a low voice, “War never ends.”

Kestrel pushes her onto the bed, knees on either side of her. Celeste watches as Kestrel pries her coat off, her muscles and sinews pulling. Beneath the coat is a tank top the shade of nutmeg, stained and frayed around the edges.

“I’ll end it for you if I have to,” Kestrel growls. Her bangs fall over her eyes in a way that makes her completely feral, completely unreachable for Celeste’s pristine world. Celeste reaches out to pull Kestrel in behind her neck, pressing their lips together. Everything about Kestrel is roughness and rock solid determination. No matter what she says, as ridiculous as it may be, Celeste always _wants_ to believe it.

“You will,” Celeste hums, as they draw away for breath. And one more time, to reassure herself, “You will.”

Kestrel takes Celeste’s hand and places it under her shirt, though it’s not like Celeste needs the guidance. She follows the planes up Kestrel’s body, stroking her breasts. Kestrel huffs and her eyes flutter shut momentarily. Celeste smiles, a little breathless at the sight of the infamous Stormguard archer taken by pleasure.

“You’re eager,” Kestrel murmurs. A lazy smile plays upon her normally stoic features as she undoes Celeste’s riding garments.

“Can’t have you ending a war _and_ ending me,” Celeste smirks. It suddenly turns into a competition to see who can get whose pants off first. They grapple, forgetting to keep their laughter down until somehow Kestrel has landed under her maiden. But it’s not like she minds.

“I win,” Celeste tugs at Kestrel’s grey underwear. Kestrel keeps the sly look on her face; in bed, when one of them wins the other does too. Celeste sucks her thighs while keeping their eyes locked, always. Kestrel bites her lower lip, stifling a moan. Not for long. Celeste touches the parting between her legs, a thin trail of wetness extending on her finger.

“What’s this?”

Kestrel props herself up on her elbows. Her breathing is more labored now, with the way Celeste is spreading her legs, bared completely.

“Hurry.”

They take a little over a quarter bell to finish. Lying next to each other, Kestrel is the one to sit up and put her clothes back on. Celeste’s eyes never leave her as she does so, her gaze roaming the archer’s skin, hoping to commit each curve to memory before it’s gone for a week, five months, two years. No one ever knows. Kestrel kisses her one last time on the cheek.

“I’ll be back soon, love.”

Celeste isn’t a spoiled child. “You’d better be.”

A flash of lightning and she’s gone. Celeste glances to her bedside table to find that a new rose has replaced the old one, fresh and mortal but beautiful while they last.


End file.
